F. H. Bradley

“ It is, of course, admitted that the self presents us with fresh matter, and with an increased complication. The point in debate is whether at the same time it supplies us with any key to the whole puzzle about reality. Does it give an experience by the help of which we can understand the way in which diversity is harmonized? Or, failing that, does it remove all necessity for such an understanding? ”

“ The end of metaphysics is to understand the universe, to find a way of thinking about facts in general which is free from contradiction. But how few writers seem to trouble themselves much about this vital issue. Of those who take their principle of understanding from the self, how few subject that principle to an impartial scrutiny. But it is easy to argue from a foregone alternative, to disprove any theory which loses sight of the self, and then to offer what remains as the secret of the universe—whether what remains is thinkable or is a complex which refuses to be understood. ”

“ We found the self, as mere feeling, gave us no key to our puzzles, and we have not had more success in our attempt with self-consciousness. So far as that transcends mere feeling, it is caught in, and is dissipated by, the old illusory play of relations and qualities. It repeats this illusion, without doubt, at a higher level than before; the endeavour is more ambitious, but the result is still the same. For we have not been taught how to understand diversity in unity. ”

“ And the attempt to find in self-consciousness an apprehension at a level, not below, but above relations—a way of apprehension superior to discursive thought, and including its mere process in a higher harmony—appears to me not successful. I am, in short, compelled to this conclusion: even if your intuition is a fact, it is not an understanding of the self or of the world. It is a mere experience, and it furnishes no consistent view about itself or about reality in general. ”

“ It may be said truly that in feeling, if you take it low enough down, there is plurality with unity and without contradiction. There being no relations and no terms, and yet, on the other side, more than bare simplicity, we experience a concrete whole as actual fact. And this fact, it may be alleged, is the understanding of our self, or is, at least, that which is superior to and over-rides any mere intellectual criticism. It must be accepted for what it is, and its reality must be admitted by the intelligence as a unique revelation. ”

“ We shall find that the self has no power to defend its own reality from mortal objections.
It is the old puzzle as to the connection of diversity with unity. As the diversity becomes more complex and the unity grows more concrete, we have, so far, found that our difficulties steadily increase. And the expectation of a sudden change and a happy solution, when we arrive at the self, seems hence little warranted. And if we glance at the individual self, as we find it at one time, there seems at first sight no clear harmony which orders and unites its entangled confusion. ”

“ And it is easy to survey the world which is selfless, to find there vanity and illusion, and then to return to one’s self into congenial darkness and the equivocal consolation of some psychological monster. But, if the object is to understand, there can be only one thing which we have to consider. It does not matter from what source our principle is derived. ”

“ How, I may be asked, if self-consciousness is no more than you say, do we take one object as self and another as not-self? Why is the observed object perceived at all in the character of self? This is a question, I think, not difficult to answer, so far at least as is required for our purpose here. The all-important point is this, that the unity of feeling never disappears. ”

“ To me the idea that the whole self can be observed in one perception would be merely chimerical. I find, first, that in the felt background there remains an obscure residue of internal sensation, which I perhaps at no time can distinguish as an object. And this felt background at any moment will almost certainly contain also elements from outer sensation. On the other hand, the self, as an object, will at any one time embrace but a poor extent of detail. It is palpably and flagrantly much more narrow than the background felt as self. ”

“ That selves exist, and are identical in some sense, is indubitable. But the doubt is whether their sameness, as we apprehend it, is really intelligible, and whether it can be true in the character in which it comes to us. Because otherwise, while it will be certain that the self and its identity somehow belong to reality, it will be equally certain that this fact has somehow been essentially misapprehended. And our conclusion must be that, since, as such, it contradicts itself, this fact must, as such, be unreal. The self also will in the end be no more than appearance. ”

“ There does not really exist any perception, either in which the object and the subject are quite the same, or in which their sameness amid difference is an object for perception. Any such consciousness would seem to be impossible psychologically. And, as it is almost useless for me to try to anticipate the reader’s views on this point, I must content myself with a very brief statement. Self-consciousness, as distinct from self-feeling, implies a relation. It is the state where the self has become an object that stands before the mind. ”

“ Feeling can be, therefore, no solution of the puzzles which, so far, have proved to be insoluble. Its content is vitiated throughout by the old inconsistencies. It may be said even to thrust upon us, in a still more apparent form, the discrepancy that lies between identity and diversity, immediate oneness and relation.
(b) Thus mere feeling has no power to justify the self s reality, and naturally none to solve the problems of the universe at large. But we may perhaps be more fortunate with some form of self-consciousness. ”

“ Either you do not descend low enough to get rid of relations with all their inconsistency, or else you have reached a level where subject and object are in no sense distinguished, and where, therefore, neither self nor its opposite exists. Feeling, if taken as immediate presentation, most obviously gives features of what later becomes the environment. And these are indivisibly one thing with what later becomes the self. Feeling, therefore, can be no unique or special revelation of the self, in distinction from any other element of the universe. ”

“ For, in considering it, we are forced to transcend mere feeling, itself not satisfactory; and yet we cannot reach any defensible thought, any intellectual principle, by which it is possible to understand how diversity can be comprehended in unity. But, if we cannot understand this, and if whatever way we have of thinking about the self proves full of inconsistency, we should then accept what must follow. The self is no doubt the highest form of experience which we have, but, for all that, is not a true form. It does not give us the facts as they are in reality ”

“ The feature, of being not-self and self in one self, can indeed be brought before the present subject, and can be felt to be its own. The unity of feeling can become an object for perception and thought, and can also be felt to belong to the self which is present, and which is the subject that perceives. ”

“ But for metaphysics a principle, if it is to stand at all, must stand absolutely by itself. While wide enough to cover the facts, it must be able to be thought without jarring internally. It is this, to repeat it once more, on which everything turns. ”

“ And so, just as the not-self is felt as still psychically my state, the self, when made an object, is still felt as individually one with me. Nay, we may reflect upon this unity of feeling, and may say that the self, as self and as not-self all in one, is our object. ”

“ Mutability is a fact in the actual feeling which we experience, for that never continues at rest. And, if we examine the content at any one given moment, we perceive that, though it presents itself as self-subsistent, it is infected by a deep-seated relativity. ”

“ And when the self changes in time, are we able to justify the inconsistency which most palpably appears, or, rather, stares us in the face? You may say that we are each assured of our personal identity in a way in which we are not assured of the sameness of things. ”

“ The reader who has followed our discussions up to this point, can, if he pleases, pursue the detail of the subject, and can further criticise the claims made for the self’s reality. But if he will drive home the objections which we have come to know in principle, the conclusion he will reach is assured already. In whatever way the self is taken, it will prove to be appearance. It cannot, if finite, maintain itself against external relations. ”

“ An experience, I suppose, can override understanding only in one way, by including it, that is, as a subordinate element somehow within itself. And such an experience is a thing which seems not discoverable in self-consciousness. ”

“ But, when once more we betake ourselves to reflection, we seem to have made no advance. For the incompleteness and relativity in the matter given by feeling become, when we reflect on them, open contradiction. The limitation is seen to be a reference to something beyond, and the self-subsistent fact shows ideality, and turns round into mere adjectives whose support we cannot find. ”

“ And to suppose that the self is to bring order into this chaos, after our experience hitherto of the self’s total impotence, seems more sanguine than rational.
If now we take force or cause, as it is revealed in the self, to be the same as volition proper, that clearly will not help us. For in volition we have an idea, determining change in the self, and so producing its own realization. [4] Volition perhaps at first sight may seem to promise a solution of our metaphysical puzzles. ”

“ This means that an element is in opposition to the felt mass, and is distinguished from it as a not-self. And there is no doubt that the self, in its various meanings, can become such a not-self. But, in whichever of its meanings we intend to consider it, the result is the same. The object is never wholly identical with the subject, and the background of feeling must contain a great deal more than what we at any time can perceive as the self. ”

“ If we keep to facts, it seems clear that at the beginning no such distinction exists at all; and it is clear too that at the latest stage there are some elements within the not-self which retain their original aspect of pleasure or pain. And hence we must come to this result. We could make little metaphysical use of the doctrine that pleasure and pain belong solely to the self as distinct from the not-self. ”

“ As long as there remains in the self a certain basis of content, ideally the same, so long may the self recall anything once associated with that basis. And this identity of content, working by redintegration and so bringing up the past as the history of one self—really this is all which we have to build upon. ”

“ But if more than an emphasis on the unity is meant, that more is even positively objectionable. For while the diversity is slurred over, instead of being explained, there will be a negative assertion as to the limits within which the self’s true unity falls. ”

“ If the reader will recall the discussions of the preceding chapter, he may, I think, convince himself on this point. Take the self, either at one time or throughout any duration, and its contents do not seem to arrange themselves as a harmony. Nor have we, so far, found a principle by the application of which we are enabled to arrange them without contradiction, (ii.) But self-consciousness, we may be told, is a special way of intuition, or perception, or what you will. ”

“ A tenable view of reality has been sought in the doctrine that each self is an independent reality, substantial if not simple. But this attempt does not call for a lengthy discussion. In the first place, if there is more than one self in the universe, we are met by the problem of their relation to each other. ”

“ Now this, of course, shows that self-sameness exists as a fact, and that hence somehow an identical self must be real. But then the question is how? The question is whether we can state the existence and the continuity of a real self in a way which is intelligible, and which is not ruined by the difficulties of previous discussions. Because, otherwise, we may have found an interesting fact, but most assuredly we have not found a tenable view about reality. ”

“ For consider: we have found, so far, that diversity and unity can not be reconciled. Both in the existence of the whole self in relation with its contents, and in the various special forms which that existence takes, we have encountered everywhere the same trouble. We have had features which must come together, and yet were willing to do so in no way that we could find. In the self there is a variety, and in the self there is a unity ”

“ And lastly the relation of the self to its contents in time will tend to become a new insoluble enigma. Monadism, on the whole, will increase and will add to the difficulties which already exist, and it will not supply us with a solution of any single one of them. ”

“ To have the felt self in its totality as an object for consciousness seems out of the question. And I would further ask the reader to bear in mind that, where the self is observed as in opposition to the not-self, this whole relation is included within that felt background, against which, on the other hand, the distinction takes place. ”